


A Use in Measured Language

by dozmuffinxc



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dozmuffinxc/pseuds/dozmuffinxc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the meta-crisis, the Doctor notices that Rose has been acting distant. When and how to broach the topic of their "new" relationship, however, isn't as easy as he'd hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Use in Measured Language

**Author's Note:**

> I held it truth, with him who sings   
> To one clear harp in divers tones,   
> That men may rise on stepping-stones   
> Of their dead selves to higher things. 
> 
> But who shall so forecast the years   
> And find in loss a gain to match?   
> Or reach a hand thro' time to catch   
> The far-off interest of tears? 
> 
> \--In Memoriam A.H.H. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

When fate had left him stranded and half-human on a parallel universe, the Doctor had anticipated that there would be complications. At the time of the meta-crisis, considering the ramifications of his pseudo-regeneration and the reality of living a mortal life had taken a back seat to saving the universe. He hadn’t had time to wonder why the TARDIS looked strangely different through new eyes before he had been tossed from its familiar depths into the strange newness of this bizarre alternate reality. But standing next to Rose on a beach in Norway, impossibly reunited with the girl who had become his reason for existence, he had actually believed that none of that mattered.

In the days that followed, he had been too caught up in the business of creating a new identity to really notice how uncharacteristically quiet she was. How, when their hands met, her fingers hesitated before linking with his; and when they did, her palm flexed against his as if attempting to fit itself into a too-tight glove. He caught her staring at his face when she thought he wasn’t looking, her eyes scanning the ridges and shadows from brow to chin with a keen, discerning gaze that made him feel oddly uncomfortable. 

The Doctor found himself with plenty of time to think about this new complication. He hadn’t gotten used to actually needing sleep, so most nights found him lying awake, fighting with drooping eyelids and sore muscles. He spent the hours counting the ways he could bring up this nagging feeling that Rose wasn’t happy, that what she saw when she looked at him wasn’t the man she had confessed her love for, but someone else, someone whose presence didn’t quite match the memories that they both shared.

It was difficult to find a time when they were completely alone. If it wasn’t Jackie, then it was the never-ending parade of Torchwood agents that marched in and out of the Tyler estate on a daily basis. There were too many demands on her attention, and it wasn’t as though she was eager to talk about what seemed, to him, like the metaphorical elephant in the uncertain vortex of their life. 

He had finally managed to catch her alone on a rare afternoon when the Estate was silent. Jackie had gone shopping and had mercifully dragged Pete and Tony along with her. He and Rose had spent time looking over Torchwood’s official reports on the events of the Medusa Cascade only to set them aside for a tray of tea and fresh biscuits. When both had been dispensed of, he decided enough was enough, and began straight in with the line he had been rehearsing mentally for days.

“It isn’t the same, is it, Rose?”

When she turned to him, her eyes unconvincingly shadowed by questioning eyebrows, he mustered up a smile and patted the cushion beside him. He waited until she had joined him on the couch, her back pressed against the arm of the seat, before going on.

“When I lost you,” he began, “the first time, I sat around the TARDIS for days. Just drifted in the Void, didn’t care where I went or if I went. I didn’t notice it for awhile — it was Donna who saw it first.”

“What…?” The way she was tilting her head, considering him with a look of combined curiosity and speculation, almost made it impossible to continue. But it had to be said, and if not now, then when?

“One of your shirts. You left a spare lying on the console. Funny: when Donna saw it she thought I must’ve — but that’s not important.” He raked a hand through his hair and wondered whether he had always been this easily distracted, or whether it was just the desire to avoid this conversation that made his mind wander to other things.

“I kept it with me, you see. Silly, really, but having it nearby was almost like having a piece of you there. I thought, if it just stayed in sight, there was a chance that you’d just trip in and laugh about how you’d been looking for it, and everything would be right again. That never happened, of course, but I kept it with me just the same.

“A shirt is a poor substitute for a person when you get right down to it. But I remembered you in it, and it smelled like you. Lavender and chips.” He felt himself blushing, but she didn’t notice. Her eyes were in her lap, boring holes in her limp hands, but he knew she was listening from the way she worried her bottom lip with her teeth.

“You didn’t choose this,” he said, “not really.” 

Her head flew up and her eyes met his again, confused at the apparent shift in the conversation. This time, it was his turn to look away.

“I’d’ve liked to give you our old life back. But here we are, and I know now that I’m like that shirt for you. I can’t show you the universe anymore, Rose, and I may be just a shadow of the man you knew, but if you’ll keep me around, I know that — ”

“Stop.” The press of her palm against his lips had silenced him before her voice had, but it was the sound of that voice that brought him back to the present and drew him up in the dark brown of her eyes. Eyes that were now filled with tears.

“You really think that, don’t you?” Whatever that was, he didn’t have a chance to ask. She was shaking her head, and the tears that had been held at bay were now shining on her cheeks.

“But what else could you think? Here you’ve been making this grand apology and I can’t even look you in the eye. It’s just… when I look at you, I want to cry because it isn’t fair, having you with me. How can you stand it? The universe was yours, and I took it away from you. That’s how I felt, the first time, when I realized that I would never see you again. I keep thinking about how unhappy you must be, and then I remember that he — you — he’s out there somewhere, alone. All the time I spent working on the dimension canon, I just knew I had to see you again. But this isn’t what I had planned, and I’m…”

“…confused.” He finished the sentence for her and was rewarded with a shaky nod of affirmation. But instead of pulling away like he expected her to, she surprised him by leaning closer and placing a hand gently against his chest. He felt rather than heard the thud of his single heart beating against his ribs and knew that she could feel it, too.

“I’d know that rhythm anywhere,” she whispered, and the faded smile that lit her eyes made him tremble. Squeezing her hand in both of his, he pressed his forehead to hers and willed his thoughts to manifest themselves into words.

“I promised myself that if there was a way, I would find you again. I didn’t plan for this either, Rose, but this is the Me that I can give you, right here, right now.”

The shock of her lips on his, so familiar and yet so foreign all at once, stole his words and his breath without warning. Her mouth formed his name over and over, filling him with its truth and its finality.

They might never travel galaxies again, but for now, the geography of their bodies was the only territory they needed to explore. Apart they floundered, but together the broken pieces began to heal and made, not two whole people, but one complete Being with the strength to throw off its mantle of despair and uncertainty and turn its thoughts towards love.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written 10.5 before, mainly because I had so much trouble acquainting myself of the idea of Rose being left behind (again) without the Doctor -- not the Doctor, anyway. But I've been reading such wonderful post-Journey's End fic on the time_and_chips and over at the then_theres_us LJ communities that I was inspired to try my hand at my own one-shot. This exercise in angst was inspired in part by scifiangel's "Finding the Words" (http://scifiangel.livejournal.com/1018.html). Give it a read if you haven't already! Finally: the title, and the excerpt that opens the fic under the cut, come from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H."


End file.
